


by candlelight

by aes3plex



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21908062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aes3plex/pseuds/aes3plex
Summary: The bed is empty when John wakes.
Relationships: John Bridgens/Harry Peglar
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33
Collections: 12 Days of Carnivale ~ 2018





	by candlelight

**Author's Note:**

> This was written & posted on Tumblr for 12 Days of Carnivale 2018. Original note: "i urgently want the au where john bridgens is a famous poet who moves to a remote island out of frustration with the Literary World and falls in love with a local deckhand. this is that i guess except it’s just tiny."

The bed is empty when John wakes.

Henry’s not the sort to leave a note, but then there’s never any need. The farthest he can go without the boat is down to the harbour. From the bedroom window John can see the dull silver hull still upsidedown in the yard, strewn with little branches; the ferry won’t be in till Tuesday. He listens: wind still up. Quiet otherwise. Tries the switch: lights still out, too.

A while to get some writing done, anyway.

He finds himself a shirt, a sweater, a pair of slippers. In the halflight these rooms with their posts and plaster always look best: he chose the house like this, with the lights out and the green-grey shadows pouring down the walls, and he has not once regretted it.

Downstairs a series of quiet, dark spaces: cold, too, even for December. If Henry’s lit the stove it hasn’t taken yet. In the kitchen the kettle is waiting on the counter, and a canister of rosehip tea. Away to the west he can hear the breakers falling on the rocks below, and the wind calling back to them.

Henry comes in from the storm as John is testing the tapwater: warm, still, though it will be done soon. Enough for a shower, if Henry wants it. At the door he toes his deckboots off: kicks the one that’s fallen back upright. Needles of fir and cedar in his hair like a garland.

“Power’s out,” Henry says, with an armful of firewood, on his way to the great cast iron stove. His fringe plastered wet to his forehead and his fingerless gloves and his Gore-Tex over cableknit. John thinks, once again, how lucky he is to have found this man, among all others. “Tea soon.”

The stove predates the house here by a hundred years: John likes to think of it, sometimes, coming over from the mainland in some little sloop—some steam-screw lugger—hauled to its place and then built around, again and again, as men and timbers fall. Henry kneeling by it as so many must have, belonging to the island as it does: part of this tightly woven cloth of blood and salt and iron.

“Have you been chopping wood,” John says, leaning against the doorframe. Certainly Henry smells of it: that wet red cedar smell. Henry looks up at him from where he crouches by the fire. Pushes his damp hair back behind his ear. “I have,” he says, with a bit of a smile.

“And you didn’t call me to watch?”

“Ha,” says Henry. “It’s gusting one-ten out there. I’m afraid my shirt stayed on.”

“Pity,” John says, and when Henry stands he catches him in a kiss: his lips cold, and his fingers.

—

The wind is still rushing when the sun goes down, and the power still out. Facing each other at either end of the couch, under every blanket they own, a bottle of rye—Henry’s choice—on the floor between them, and the fire low and steady in the stove.

“You’ll miss the game,” John says, realizing.

Henry shrugs. Presses his foot against John’s thigh.

“There’ll be others,” he says. “Read to me, instead.”

“It’s probably on the radio,” John says, “If you’d like.”

“Read to me,” Henry says again, tipping his head back against the arm of the couch.

John watches him: the long line of his throat, the ease of his shoulders, the neat clipped shape of his beard. His tousled hair, dried in the heat of the fire.

“All right,” says John.

—

Later, they go upstairs.

Under the eaves the heat from below is hanging; still, they tumble their pile of blankets on top of the duvet. Henry goes off to brush his teeth. John stands in the dark and waits.

It is a new moon, and there is barely light at all: every object is a shadow, blue and unknown. He contemplates one by one the books stacked inelegantly on the nightstand, a coffee cup forgotten—yesterday morning, it must be—Henry’s little whittled figures. The dresser, the old teak chair, the great wooden bed with its ship-salvage posts like whale’s ribs built into the wall (“Like Penelope’s,” Henry had said, when John had first brought him here, and oh, John had kissed him for it). The life they have made here: this house, these things.

Henry comes back with a candle in a storm lantern.

“What’s that for,” John asks, smiling.

“So I can see you,” says Henry, “Obviously.”

Steps forward. Slips his hand under John’s untucked shirt–his fingers still cool–and up the softness of his side. John steadies his breathing: leans for the kiss: and Henry gives it easily, without thinking. Breaks it, for a moment, to rest his head on John’s shoulder.

“Mr Bridgens,” he breathes, in John’s ear, “I feel I should inform you that I have no intention of sleeping for quite some time.”


End file.
